The last sentence is not original. Albert’s
Sunday-school teacher said it to Albert on the occasion
of his taking up his duties at the castle, and it
stuck in his memory. Fortunately, for it expressed
exactly what Albert wished to say. From now on
Reggie Byng’s progress with Lady Maud Marsh
was to be the thing nearest to Albert’s heart.

And George meanwhile? Little knowing how Fate
has changed in a flash an ally into an opponent he
is standing at the edge of the shrubbery near the
castle gate. The night is very beautiful; the
barked spots on his hands and knees are hurting much
less now; and he is full of long, sweet thoughts.
He has just discovered the extraordinary resemblance,
which had not struck him as he was climbing up the
knotted sheet, between his own position and that of
the hero of Tennyson’s Maud, a poem to which
he has always been particularly addicted—­and
never more so than during the days since he learned
the name of the only possible girl. When he has
not been playing golf, Tennyson’s Maud has been
his constant companion.

“Queen rose of the rosebud
garden of girls
Come hither,
the dances are done,
In glass of satin and
glimmer of pearls.
Queen lily
and rose in one;
Shine out, little head,
sunning over with curls
To the flowers,
and be their sun.”

The music from the ballroom flows out to him through
the motionless air. The smell of sweet earth
and growing things is everywhere.

“Come into the garden,
Maud,
For the
black bat, night, hath flown,
Come into the garden,
Maud,
I am here
at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices
are wafted abroad,
And the
musk of the rose is blown.”

He draws a deep breath, misled young man. The
night is very beautiful. It is near to the dawn
now and in the bushes live things are beginning to
stir and whisper.

“Maud!”

Surely she can hear him?

“Maud!”

The silver stars looked down dispassionately.
This sort of thing had no novelty for them.

CHAPTER 15.

Lord Belpher’s twenty-first birthday dawned
brightly, heralded in by much twittering of sparrows
in the ivy outside his bedroom. These Percy did
not hear, for he was sound asleep and had had a late
night. The first sound that was able to penetrate
his heavy slumber and rouse him to a realization that
his birthday had arrived was the piercing cry of Reggie
Byng on his way to the bath-room across the corridor.
It was Reggie’s disturbing custom to urge himself
on to a cold bath with encouraging yells; and the
noise of this performance, followed by violent splashing
and a series of sharp howls as the sponge played upon
the Byng spine, made sleep an impossibility within
a radius of many yards. Percy sat up in bed,
and cursed Reggie silently. He discovered that
he had a headache.